Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(22)

“Aurelia.”

I kept my head turned away and gazed at the fire and the forest looming behind it, a black velvet shawl draped across the white, hard-angled shoulders of Achleva’s distant mountains. I said, “Everything you’ve seen, everything you and I have been through, and you still don’t understand.”

“Have you been listening at all?” He came between me and my view of the forest and sky, his eyes narrowed and full of feeling. “I’m trying to tell you I love you, Aurelia.”

“You can’t,” I said leadenly. “You don’t know how.”

“What can that possibly mean?”

“It means that when we get to Achleva and you have been assured that I am safe and settled, I will dismiss you from your duties and you’ll be able to return to Renalt. Stay in the guard, or don’t. Marry, if you like.” I felt my composure slipping. “I hope you do.”

He said nothing more; he just turned and walked away, down past where Lisette and Conrad were sleeping, and out into the tall, starlit grass of the border fields. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t see him anymore and I collapsed onto my bedroll, anguished and alone.

Good, I thought. The only person I can hurt now is me.





?9




The dream was vivid. I was standing at the edge of the forest, watching a pale light between the trees. I squinted to make out what it was, heading toward it without consciously moving my feet. I was a moth drawn to a flame; I knew nothing good could lie beyond, but I was pulled toward it anyway.

The light was Toris’s lamp. He was several hundred feet inside the tree line, hunched over, face obscured by the shadows into something that barely resembled him. I shrank behind the trunk of a large tree and watched as he took the blood of the Founder from the cord around his neck, unstopped it, and let the liquid drip onto his face. One. Two. Three drops. Then he put the relic back inside his shirt.

Toris stood slowly, and for a minute his face looked all wrong, as if his bones had rearranged themselves in unnatural ways. He was muttering under his breath, words both foreign and frightening. I could feel the power in them. This was blood magic. He had used the Founder’s own blood to enact a spell. And judging from the heaviness in the air, an unpleasant one.

The dream shifted suddenly, throwing me into a chaotic jumble of upsetting images: a flash of blue fabric. A hand on a knife. And Kellan’s visage, contorted in pain as Toris went to strike.

I came out of the dream with a choked gasp, clamping my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. I saw the Harbinger for less than a moment, but the skin of my arm was marked a chill blue from her hand.

Scrambling from my bedroll, I grabbed a leather satchel and began stuffing it with whatever I could get my hands on.

Kellan was brooding by the fire with his back turned away from me, listlessly poking it with a long stick. I scuttled over to kneel at his side. “Kellan.” His name was sticky on my tongue. I tried again, shaking him. “Kellan!”

He finally turned toward me. His sullenness was startled away by my distress.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his hurt and anger ousted by the keen sense of urgency he’d honed in his five years as my guard.

“We have to go. Just us and Conrad. Now. It’s . . . it’s Toris. He’s doing magic. Blood magic. In the woods, he . . .” I trailed off, suddenly aware of how ridiculous it sounded accusing a devout Tribunal magistrate of witchcraft. But I knew the Harbinger had not misled me. I knew I’d seen true. How could I make him believe me, especially now?

I took him by his shoulders. “I know how it sounds, but listen to me. I don’t care if you believe anything I’ve told you up to this point, but you must believe me now. We have to leave, immediately. Please, Kellan. I’m begging you. Trust me.”

He searched my face and then said, “All right, Aurelia. I trust you.”

We seized what we could, and Kellan secured the satchel to Falada’s saddle. I mounted my horse as Kellan grabbed the still-sleeping Conrad and held him tight as he swept onto Falada’s back.

Lisette stirred when she heard Conrad’s frightened crying. “What’s going on? Aurelia? What are you doing? Aurelia! Let him go!”

We broke for the forest with Lisette’s shouts echoing behind us. “Father! Father! They’ve got the prince! They’re getting away!”

We bolted past Toris as he was running toward the campsite. A lantern swung from a chain in his hand, painting his face into an angry mask of light and shadow, not unlike his face in my dream. Over my shoulder, I watched him barrel toward the other horses and mount the first one he came to. Lisette had to jump out of the way or be run over.

We urged our horses forward as the trail turned into sharp switchbacks, climbing higher and higher into the trees. Toris was on our heels, close enough that I could hear the sound of his taunting whistle to the rhythm of the horse’s hooves. Don’t go, my child, to the Ebonwilde, for there a witch resides . . . But our horses were sure and strong; we were gaining ground. I allowed myself some hope that we would make it out of this.

The hope was short-lived.

The path made a sharp turn to the right and ran along the sheer edge of a gorge, the powerful River Sentis rushing below. It was a treacherous road, rutted and narrow, with parts that had long ago given way to weather and time and collapsed into the river, leaving long, jagged scars along the remaining edge. On the other side of the road, the forest loomed. Somewhere within its incomprehensible darkness, a wolf howled. My horse jumped and skittishly stamped her feet at the sound. When it came again, she reared up with a frightened scream, hooves slashing wildly against the air.